The present invention relates to a set of unique parallelepipedal cells, capable of a hollow core construction. Each cell has six faces, that matingly interlock with the faces on the other cells in the set. The cells are free to move about each other individually or in groupings, generally with three degrees of freedom. (I.E. for rectangular parallelepipeds, movement is allowed in each of the X, Y and Z axis.) The cells may be of a monolithic single-piece design or composed of six or less single face plates. There are two different designs of faces that can form the cells. In the first design each face plate is identical. The second design incorporates two different face plates. For the cubic or rhombohedral form each cell face plate is designed to be assembled with any other face plate to form a cell, regardless of the orientation of the face plates. A parallelepiped form with differing edge-lengths would require up to six different types of face plates. When six face plates are assembled they form the hollow core parallelepipedal cell. The tapered interlocking design on the backside of each face plate maximizes the amount of hollow interior space while providing for a rigid unibody design wherein the strength of the cell is a synergistic function of all six face plates. Since the desired end use is as a cellular level, self propelled building block for robotic architecture, the ease of fabrication and degree of miniaturization that can be accomplished with this design is one of this invention's stronger features.
Since the field of art for such an invention is so narrow, there is little in the way of prior art to compare it to. Although some earlier prototypes have been constructed, this set's design greatly simplifies the mass fabrication of the cell set as well as the ease of a cell or cell grouping about another cell or cell grouping.